


A Wolf Who Sends Flowers

by beepalais



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3213059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepalais/pseuds/beepalais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Vulpa Inculta was never bred, not even after her first blood. She has been a </i> virgo<i> since the day the Rainshakers were captured and razed to the ground, the women dead or enlisted, the men dead or enslaved </i></p><p>The fox, the Mojave, the other side of the coin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wolf Who Sends Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt over at the KM. I keep saying I'm going to expand on this universe and I do mean to, so hopefully that will happen sometime soon? Ending line is a hamfisted reference to ASOIAF

Vulpa Inculta was never bred, not even after her first blood. She has been a _virgo_ since the day the Rainshakers were captured and razed to the ground, the women dead or enlisted, the men dead or enslaved. At first she was too young, and then too slender, and then too wily for them to ever put a pup in her. She fought it hard, first with words and then with swords, and she got her way in the end, the pattern establishing itself early on. That was a constant, first at Flagstaff, now at the Hill. Vulpa always got her way. She could get you your way too, for the right price.

At first they thought she refused to be bred because she was afraid of men, of their cocks, of sex itself, but that wasn’t true, not quite. Soon they understood—Vulpa was of a rarer sort, a woman who preferred the intimate company of other women. It was understandable—the desert was harsh and the men who served them were by and large unworthy. But all legionaries had to serve as _gravidae_ —it was an initiation, an honor. For anyone else before, preference was no excuse, but Vulpa changed that. She selected the women like her and pulled them from rotation, made it clear they were to remain virgines forever. Most of those women went on to become her frumentarii. _Vulpa and her thin girls,_ Caesar would snicker humorlessly. _Vulpa and her harem. So long as they get the job done._

They live in a set of tents all together on the edge of the Fort, with their own fire, their own set of training weapons, their own bed rolls and wine stocks and furs. Walking there is like walking into another world, blurrier and more mysterious than the one you left, always smelling of incense and wine. Men are not allowed near their tents, not even the lowest of slaves who are not even fit to breed the _gravidae_. Some say it's because the women walk naked among each other, wearing only war paint and the charms of the legion priests, their skin glowing and bare and sticky with spilled wine. The legionary trainees speak in whispers of distant horrors in the dead of the night---that Vulpa makes her girls perform human sacrifices and bathe in the blood to bring them strength in battle, that they contact the spirits, that they raise the dead. Who knew if it was true? The ones who got close enough to know never came back telling.

The frumentarii all wear their hair the same—long to one side, shorn close on the other, and it's said that to be inducted, you must let Vulpa cut it for you, let her hold those shears so close to your skull and pray she did not want you dead. It had happened before. It would happen again, and no one would stop her. Those who had tried before were gone now, their blood on Vulpa’s machete, their names in the back of the minds of all who thought to cross her. The Legate Lania watches her, always—-soon the daughter of Mars will leave her earthly body, and the _virgines_ will die screaming before they allow anyone besides Vulpa to ascend to Caesar’s throne. This worries Lania. This worries everyone.

After all, they call her the young fox, and it’s said that she will never be killed.


End file.
